It took even longer for the news to reach me in a roundabout way. Saul Broudy or Paula Ballan or Mike Miller or some other Philly folk fest or maybe Richard Flohil in Montreal must have introduced me to him years ago, how many I forget. Like everyone else he knew, I was a late night phone call, some of which I didn't want to make or take. And a chinese meal eater. Unlike many others, we were lovers too, for a brief time, and loving friends ever after. One night, having dinner with Tex in a New York city chinatown dive, in came Bill Cosby, with his wife and her sister. Cosby came past our table, did a double take, and then enveloped the seated Tex in a gigantic hug. They traded old stories and insults, introduced their respective guests, and then we went on to finish our separate meals at different tables. There were more flurries of speech across the room during dinner and as a goodbye, and then Tex explained how he'd come to know Cosby. Seems before Bill was any good as a standup, he worked bar in the folk place Tex frequented most in Philly, and if the place was deserted or else mellow enough, at 3 am they'd let Cosby practice his shtick. At least, that's how Tex told it to me then. After he made The Freshman, and was thinking about how to recruit his always meagre finances, I urged him to be in touch with Cosby at The Astoria Studios in Queens, NY cause I thought his old friend might pass his showreel on to higher ups, and he would say, maybe, every time I mentioned it over the next few years. He never did, natch. He always told me I'd love the knife show, but I never made it there, and now I regret it. It would be one more picture memory of Tex for me. I'm glad to have the ones that are mine, and the new ones I've conjured up from your posts.